Home from 1991 film ‘My Girl’ hits market in Florida, becomes most popular listing at Realtor.com

(NEXSTAR) – One of the most popular current listings on Realtor.com will probably look very familiar to movie buffs.

A sprawling Victorian home that was used as the exterior of the Sultenfuss residence in the 1991 film “My Girl” has hit the market in Bartow, Florida — and it has since racked up “tens of thousands of views” on Realtor.com, making it the most-clicked listing of the past week.

The interest doesn’t really come as a surprise to homeowner Sam Brunt, who bought the house in 2019, hoping to return it to its former glory as a bed and breakfast once known as the Stanford Inn.

“This house is very important to our little town,” said Brunt, who claimed that “half a dozen” people stop by to take photos of the exterior every week. And he usually doesn’t mind, as long as they refrain from snooping around or running up on his porch.

“If I see somebody taking pictures from outside, I’ll invite them [up],” he says, adding that he even keeps a cardboard cutout of the film’s two young stars — Anna Chlumsky and Macaulay Culkin — for folks to pose with.

Being a former inn, the 7,508-square-foot house has six master suites, seven fireplaces, a commercial kitchen and, of course, the same wrap-around porch that was prominently featured in the movie. There’s also a “hotel-size” pool in the yard as well as two separate carriage houses, totaling an additional 2,000 square feet.

The house is currently selling for $675,000.

Brunt said he was initially interested in restoring the property as a bed and breakfast, but the coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench into his plans.

“I hate to sell it,” he said. “It’s what I wanted to retire in. But because of COVID, it changed everything.”

Brunt said he did a fair bit of work to the house since purchasing it, but isn’t planning to convert it to a bed and breakfast anymore. In fact, he changed gears entirely and opened a wine bar in Bartow — Stanford Wines, named after the old Stanford Inn — but he’s still hoping someone might want to finish what he and his wife started.

“I made sure to leave enough meat on the bones for someone to really finish it off, make it an Airbnb or bed and breakfast, or residence that’s really, really nice,” he said. “I just hope someone comes in and finishes what we set out to do.”